“I think we really built it off our own connection as actors. Like Anna is just… as everybody knows, she’s just incredible. I look into her eyes, and I basically start crying. That was the kind of relationship we had. We completely trusted each other, and I so admire her. I think that permeated into Keiko’s feelings as well.”
Of course, Keiko’s bond with her granddaughter isn’t the only relationship that’s front and center in the season 2 finale. (Though it is the only one that involves a badass rescue beneath a pair of dueling Titans.) Her relationships with both Lee and Billy are tangled and messy enough that they could probably fuel an entire 10-part drama all on their own. But for Yamamoto, it’s the inexplicably connected nature of this trio that makes their shared bonds so compelling.
“I’ve never wavered in my belief that the three of them — Billy, Lee, and Keiko — are soulmates,” she says. “It’s not just Lee and her, and it’s not just Billy and her. It’s the three of them. And, in a strange way, Lee and Keiko don’t work without Billy, which is the tragedy, right? Kurt [Russell, who plays the older Lee Shaw] was saying that when we find Billy’s letter in the rift, Lee also looks at it and realizes it’s for Keiko, and he’s like, ‘Damn, I was never meant to be with her. It was always supposed to be Billy.’ That’s how he played it. And I thought that was so beautiful. But also at the same time, they couldn’t have worked without Lee. If any of those elements go missing, including the time and setting on all of those things, they’re just doomed. That’s the tragedy of these three people.”
The finale manages to give Lee and Keiko — at least their younger selves — some closure thanks to the timey-wimey magic of the rift energy that sends Titan X back to Axis Mundi and allows the pair to see each other one last time. (Granted, Lee’s older self also gets a moment with his younger self, which is equally moving in a slightly different context.)
“Playing that moment, looking at young Lee…as I said, there was a scene that was cut where she struggles to make that decision, but she ultimately accepts it, decides to stay, and says goodbye to young Lee. He’s okay with it. It’s that thing of, ‘See you in the next one’, you know? There’s a hope in that sadness. And looking at Lee now…he’s still that person that you know is always going to be there for her. They do have their differences, of course, but she knows that and he knows that, and that’s just how it’s going to be, no matter what age difference there is.”
As we look toward a third season of Monarch, Keiko and Lee are taking separate paths in their attempts to track down the still-missing Kentaro and Isabel Simmons before they can find a way to open a permanent rift, a choice that could provide some intriguing conflict for the pair down the road.
